Games that truly captivated me: DOOM

There are a lot of games that really stick with me over the years and how they were truly special in my world either because of their innovation or simply because they were great games. In the case of DOOM, this was a game that took up all of my time, encouraged talk among my gaming friends, and even invaded my dreams.

It wasn't the first of its kind, but it may as well have been.

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These days, it seems as though half of the games on the market are some sort of FPS (first person shooter) game but when DOOM was released back in 1993 it was the first game of its type to get widespread release and basically everyone loved it. Wolfenstein 3D was technically the grand-daddy of FPS games, but not many people played it and even by 90's standards the graphics were pretty poor. DOOM on the other hand, was majestic in its presentation and the world had never seen anything like this before.

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You needed a relatively powerful computer in order to play this game and while I have no idea if this is true or not, the desire to play DOOM may have resulted in the sales of computers. I know that the computer that my family had could barely run this thing, and it was because of this that I started saving money and had an agreement with my parents that they would split the cost of a new machine with me. I quickly started mowing lawns and doing odd jobs all over the neighborhood in order to raise the cash. In the meantime my neighbor already had a machine powerful enough to run this game and we would spend hours on end playing DOOM.

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One of the really special things about DOOM was that of all the games that I had played in my life up to that point it was the first game that I found to be genuinely terrifying. The lighting, the feeling of wondering what is beyond that door that I am about to open, and especially the directional sound would keep you on the edge of your seat for ages while playing this.

Some of the larger enemies would scare the crap out of me the first time I encountered them and I only really had one strategy and that was to run away while firing off rockets and hoping that I didn't accidentally hit a wall with my own rockets and blow myself up.

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I was never able to defeat this game without using cheat codes, but I do recall the final room filled with lava where enemies would continually respawn and the only way to win was to ride up and down on this platform and time a rocket shot through a tiny hole in the wall and the entire time you would be getting mobbed from all sides and getting pushed into the lava below. It wasn't supposed to be easy obviously and I kind of regret that I used a cheat code. I should have just keep trying until I got it right.

After that you would face "Mastermind" and since I was already in "god mode" at that point I kind of ruined the final battle because in god mode you can't be hurt

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These days, I feel as though the FPS market is absolutely swamped and there are honestly too many of them. I also feel that the latest DOOM games are very impressive but ultimately too difficult for me. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am a much more casual gamer now than I was when I was a teenager.

It also introduced multiplayer death-matches that were likely instrumental in developing today's PvP heavy world. Back in those days, we had to physically move out computers to other people's houses in order to participate in this because the internet was horrible in the early 90's. I honestly don't recall if online multiplayer was even an option. If it was, it probably would have been pretty terrible since if you even had internet at all, it would have been dial-up and the lag would have been incredible.

I think I am probably older than most of the gamers on here but when DOOM was released it was basically all that anyone was talking about. It was a turning point in overall gaming and lead to the release of many of the games that most people consider to be their favorite type of game. It all had to start somewhere though....